The first referenced copending application, whose contents are herein incorporated by reference, describes a continuous carrier for electrical or mechanical parts that is less expensive, sufficiently adjustable to accommodate electrical or mechanical components of any shape, size, or configuration, especially components designed for surface mounting on printed circuit boards (PCBs) or the like, and will work with either or both mechanical and pneumatic types of pick-and-place devices. The invention of that application uses an added flexible filament or strip for carrying, in one embodiment, a strip of electrical pin components, which allows the carried strip to be reeled up for subsequent processing.
The second referenced copending application, whose contents are herein incorporated by reference, describes a miniature switch in which in one embodiment uses a pair of electrically-conductive contact members which are shorted together by a wire when the housing-supported wire is pushed downward.
One way of fabricating such pins or switch contacts using surface mounting technology (SMT) for soldering to PCBs is by stamping, from an electrically-conductive blank of, for example, a copper alloy, a continuous strip of pins which are subsequently plated with a solderable finish, such as tin-lead or gold, especially over the solderable surface, to promote soldering to the pads on PCBs or a like substrate. By "solderable surface" is meant the surface of the component which engages and is soldered to a substrate using surface mount technology, as opposed to insertion in through-holes or blind holes of the substrate. One scheme for the manufacture of SMT pins or switch contacts by stamping leaves them in strip form interconnected at their tips by links as part of a continuous carrier strip. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,451,174. However, this method uses excess material as a carrier, which is subsequently discarded as scrap. Further, the carrier is in an undesireable location for selective plating of the pin tip which sometimes requires a precious metal coating. This coating is usually applied by dipping the end of the pin and carrier into a plating solution which deposits precious metal on the pin tips but also unnecessarily on the carrier which is later discarded.